Many women with ovarian cancer complained of symptoms up to a
year before diagnosis, but their doctors did not order the right
tests for the fast-growing tumor until later, researchers have
said.
Elderly women with ovarian cancer were at least twice as likely to
visit a doctor and report symptoms such as abdominal swelling or
pelvic pain, Dr Lloyd Smith of the University of California at
Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento and colleagues reported in
Monday's issue of the journal Cancer.
"Our findings suggest that ovarian cancer could be diagnosed
earlier in some patients," Smith said in a statement.
For their study they looked at the claims records of 1,985 elderly
women with ovarian cancer, 6,024 elderly women with breast cancer,
and 10,941 Medicare-enrolled women of the same age without
cancer.
They compared diagnosis codes - which doctors write down when
making insurance or Medicare claims - and claims for diagnostic
procedures.
They found about 40 percent of the women had physician claims
indicating one or more visits for abdominal or pelvic symptoms
before their ovarian cancer was diagnosed.
While abdominal pain and swelling are not always symptoms of
ovarian cancer, the disease is especially deadly because it usually
is diagnosed after it has spread.
It is a tumor that grows quickly, progressing from early to
advanced stages in as little time as a year, so speedy diagnosis is
key.
This year, more than 22,000 women in the United States will be
diagnosed with ovarian cancer and more than 16,000 will die of it,
according to the American Cancer Society, which publishes
Cancer.
It can be diagnosed with pelvic imaging, or a blood test for a
protein called CA-125, although neither of these tests will detect
all cases of ovarian cancer.
The CA-125 test catches about half of early, Stage I ovarian
cancers and is inadequate when used alone to diagnose early ovarian
cancer. For patients with later, Stage II, III or IV disease, the
test is 80 percent accurate in detecting cancer.
Another 20 percent of ovarian cancer patients never have increased
CA-125.
Only 25% of the ovarian cancer patients had pelvic imaging or
CA-125 tests between three years and four months before diagnosis,
Smith's team found.
